The Smoky Hill Trail was the most direct route to Denver and the goldfields of the central Rockies. Immigrants heading west through central Kansas followed the Kansas River, then traveled up its Smoky Hill River branch into the high plains of eastern Colorado. At the point where the Smoky Hill River ended, they turned northwest toward Denver across high, dry rolling prairie country, a difficult stretch that a Denver newspaper said only the "foolhardy and insane" would dare. During the full-scale Indian-white wars of the mid-1860s, the trail was extremely dangerous, yet the Butterfield Overland Stage used the route, and later the Kansas Pacific Railroad was built along the trail's ruts. In the summer of 1866, adventurer and writer Bayard Taylor traveled by stagecoach on the trail and reported that at the Butterfield stage stop at Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, there was a large and handsome frame stable for the mules but no dwelling, so the people lived in a natural cave about thirty feet under the bluff, where he and his companions were served antelope steak, tomatoes, bread, pickles, and potatoes after two days of detestable fare.